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Returning to reality?

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

11/17/10, 9:06 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:06 PM CET

Danish MEP has had enough of the European Parliament.

Danish far-right politician Morten Messerschmidt became a member of the European Parliament last year after harvesting more than 300,000 personal preference votes. But at his 30th birthday party last week the crown prince of the Danish People’s Party announced that he had now served his “national service” and would be seeking a return to the national parliament and what he described as “reality”.

This decision may come as some relief to officials in the European Commission: since he became an MEP, Messerschmidt has filed 119 Parliamentary questions, ranging from the safety of electronic cigarettes to the “greenhouse effect” in the atmosphere of other planets.

Imagine being the hapless official charged with compiling an answer to the following question, which was given the title “number of rules in force in the EU”: “For each of the last five years, what is the latest figure for the total number of regulations, directives, decisions, international agreements, recommendations, communications, Green Papers, White Papers, resolutions of the European Council and other institutions, unpublished decisions and rules, etc plus statements by Member States and institutions on regulations, directives, agreements, decisions etc?”

The answer can be found via Messerschmidt’s European Parliament webpage.